


A Good Friend

by Einsof



Series: A Good Solution [2]
Category: Xenoblade Chronicles
Genre: Aftercare, Corporal Punishment, Domestic Discipline, Dominance, M/M, Relationship Negotiation, Spanking, Submission
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-30
Updated: 2016-05-30
Packaged: 2018-07-11 06:07:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7032364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Einsof/pseuds/Einsof
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shulk had hoped that if he applied himself diligently, he could avoid another punishment from Reyn. But Shulk, Reyn, and Sharla's first encounter with Xord shows Shulk that he still has a long way to go.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Good Friend

Shulk was so exhausted that he’d stopped feeling tired. It would be dawn soon and he hadn’t slept. A kind of euphoria had settled over him halfway back to the refugee camp, and sleep was the furthest thing from his mind. Not only had he not slept in at least thirty-six hours, but he was sick with worry as well. The weariness and the concern melded together and sat in the pit of his stomach like a fiery iron ball, leaving him jittery, unable to sleep.

They’d changed the future, but not enough. Juju was gone, taken by the faced Mechon to Colony 6. For all that Sharla had been desperate to set off after him immediately, they’d been pursuing her brother’s cart on foot for the better part of a day when they’d been ambushed, and they’d all needed to resupply and rest before launching an assault on the Colony. The hike back to the refugee camp had nearly been the death of all three of them, but it had been especially hard on Sharla, who was practically inconsolable with grief, fear, and rage.

She was made of stern stuff, but she’d been busy trying to hold everyone else together – including her brother – for a month, and Juju being taken by the Mechon hadn’t broken her, but it had struck her a serious blow. She hadn’t been okay, and it had taken all that Shulk and Reyn had to persuade her that the best thing to do was head back to the camp, stock up on supplies, and get some rest. Go in fresh. The Mechon were trying to get them to come to Colony 6, after all. They wouldn’t let anything happen to Juju and risk their only leverage.

They wouldn’t. Shulk kept telling himself that.

Reyn had taken Sharla to her ‘room’ in the cave as soon as they’d arrived back at the camp, and told Shulk to get some rest as well. Shulk had tried, and stretched out in his bedroll in a corner of the cave for a million years or so, staring at the shifting shadows on the ceiling. There was no sleep in him. He wasn’t sure he’d ever slept in his life.

After awhile he’d gotten dressed and left the cave, gone back outside into the moonlight clearing outside. Taking off his shoes, he’d sat down by the lake and begun soaking his feet in the cool waters. 

Juju will be fine, Shulk told himself over and over again, and wished he believed it. He had nothing else to think about, nothing productive to do; he ought to have just slept. But he couldn’t, or didn’t want to, or some weird combination of the two, and so he sat by the water, dry-eyed, and tried to think of something, anything, to contribute. Tried to fix it. 

Failed.

He heard Reyn coming up behind him and he glanced over his shoulder. Reyn met his gaze with a weary smile, and Shulk nodded him over. They didn’t speak while Reyn kicked off his shoes and joined Shulk by the water, nor for several minutes after. Only when Reyn folded his arms across his knees and rested his head on his arms did Shulk speak. “Is she all right?”

“No,” Reyn replied, not lifting his head, speaking into his lap. “How about you?”

“No.” Shulk sighed. “What about you?”

Reyn shrugged. “One foot in front of the other. Doubt we’ll get out of here tomorrow. Everyone needs rest. Sleep during the day, move at night. They’ll know we’re coming.” There was a long silence between them, and Reyn lifted his head to look at Shulk. “Vangarre would never go into a situation like this,” Reyn told Shulk, sounding exhausted. He shook his head slowly at his own words. “Never. Not when that big faced Mechon told us to come along, not knowing that we’d listen. He’d let Juju go. Probably be the right call, too.”

“That’s not an option,” Shulk told Reyn softly, meeting his eyes. “Right?”

“Right.” 

Their eyes stayed with each other across the short distance separating them, and for what seemed like a long time the only sound was the lapping of water at their legs. Reyn looked so tired, deep bags under his eyes. Shulk had never seen him look so careworn, so much older than he was. He doubted he himself looked much better.

“You look like you should get some rest,” he told Reyn, gently. 

“So do you.”

“Couldn’t sleep. Can’t sleep.”

“Me too.” Reyn turned his face away from Shulk, rested his chin on his arms now, and stared across the water. He seemed to be thinking about something. “We gotta be at our best when we get to the Colony, Shulk,” he said. “Can’t afford to mess this one up.”

“We’ll get him back,” Shulk said firmly. He put his hand on Reyn’s muscular shoulder, gave it what he hoped was a reassuring squeeze. “I know we will.”

“Yeah.” Reyn didn’t look at Shulk this time, but continued to stare out at the water. “But I mean it, Shulk,” he said. “Our very best.”

“I know. We will be.”

Reyn sighed heavily. “Shulk…”

Shulk cocked his head to one side and gave Reyn’s shoulder another squeeze. “Reyn, it’s all right. Why don’t you go try to get some sleep?”

“It’s not that,” Reyn replied, then sighed again. “Well, it is, but it’s not, too.”

“Then what is it?”

“You’re getting a spanking, that’s what,” Reyn said into the crisp early morning air, sounding mournful.

There was a very long pause.

“I…” Shulk’s stomach dropped and he felt his face go hot, startled not only by what Reyn had said, but his matter-of-fact tone. His mind flew back over the day’s events, trying to find what Reyn thought he’d earned it for, and found nothing. In the interim he could only stare wide-eyed at Reyn, who for his part continued to stare blankly out over the water. “…what?”

“You heard me,” Reyn replied. “Might as well do it now. Probably we’ll both be tired out enough after to get some sleep.”

Shulk blinked, shook his head to try and clear it, and belatedly took his hand off of Reyn’s shoulder. “I don’t…I mean…Reyn…what did I even do?”

Reyn glanced at him and frowned. “You mean you don’t know?”

Shulk shook his head frantically. The threat of another punishment from Reyn had made him feel even more alert and awake, but even as he cast his mind back over the day, he couldn’t think of anything that would have warranted a second spanking. Even as he considered it, he felt his face start to go hot. “Reyn, I…I told you about everything I saw. I promise. And we’ve done all your drills, and, I’ve listened, and…” He trailed off. There was a sinking feeling in his stomach.

“Up on the plateau, fighting that faced one,” Reyn said flatly. He seemed disappointed by Shulk’s confusion, as if whatever offense he’d committed was amplified by his ignorance. He waited expectantly, and all Shulk could do was shake his head and give Reyn a helpless shrug. “You left Sharla dangling off that cliff so that you could chase after that Mechon.”

Shulk’s stomach dropped. “I…” He was stammering too much, it made him seem foolish. But at the same time, he was – again – too caught off guard to know exactly what to do or to say. He felt his backside clench reflexively. “I mean…you chased after him too!”

Reyn frowned darkly. That had obviously not been the right thing to say. “Oh, you thought I ought to disengage?”

Rule number one, first day: Reyn doesn’t disengage. Reyn holds the line and keeps Shulk (and the rest of the squad) safe, so they can do their jobs. Cold sweat broke out on Shulk’s back and forearms again. “No,” Shulk said softly, sadly, “that’s my job.”

Reyn sighed and scrubbed a hand through his hair. Already unkempt, it stuck up crazily in all directions after Reyn was done with it. Glancing around, he took Shulk by the arm – just like the first time – and pulled him to his feet. “Come on. Let’s go someplace private.”

And then Reyn was leading Shulk – again – to a punishment. The same hand on the same arm, the same firm, inescapable pressure, leading Shulk away from the water and the camp, towards the woods where no one would be able to hear.

Shulk stumbled along behind Reyn in a fearful daze, desperately trying and failing to organize his thoughts. The urge to dig in his heels, object vocally, was intense, but for some reason he couldn’t bring himself to. It wasn’t as if Reyn didn’t have a point, they’d drilled on mixed unit tactics and individual responsibilities and he’d known - at least in principle - that if something had come up like had come up earlier in the day, it was his job, not Reyn’s, to attend to it promptly. It was, as Reyn had told him, just a natural extension of the sort of things his visions lead to him doing in battle anyhow: spreading information, addressing crises, running interference.

But it had all flown out of his head when he’d seen the Monado glancing uselessly off that glistening metal hull, heard the faced Mechon’s mocking laughter, seen Juju pleading in the Mechon’s grip for someone to save him. It wasn’t as if Reyn was wrong…

The startled trance that had led to him meekly following in Reyn’s wake was suddenly broken, and Shulk tried to dig his feet in, but that only caused him to stumble and nearly fall. Reyn paused and half-turned to look at Shulk, both, it seemed, to make sure that he was all right and to frown at him in annoyance. Shulk reached up and grabbed Reyn’s wrist tightly. The trees had closed in around them and it was starting to get brighter as dawn peeked over the Bionis’ crown, lighting the trees with a faint orange glow. “Reyn, wait,” he pleaded.

Instead of acknowledging him, Reyn looked around, as if satisfying himself no one was about. They were far enough under the trees. He sighed at Shulk, and his shoulders slumped. “This’ll do. Take your clothes off, Shulk.”

Shulk felt his face go crimson at the off-handed, matter-of-fact command to strip naked. “Wait.”

Reyn sighed. “Shulk.”

Shulk’s mind was racing, back four days to the night outside Tephra Cave, when Reyn had stripped him naked and spanked him. That night, curled up nude in his bedroll, Shulk would have done anything to avoid another spanking like the one Reyn had given him, and not just because being stripped and spanked by his own best friend was mortifying. 

Shulk had never been enthusiastic about being spanked, and had only consented to it with Dunban after Dunban made it clear that corporal punishment was an important part of training with a blade, at least as far as Dunban was concerned. For a while Shulk had even tried to suggest different punishments when Dunban found his performance lacking, but Dunban had been implacable. And Dunban, for all that Shulk had hated being spanked by him, had known what he was doing; Reyn was a relentless, inexperienced spanker, with none of Dunban’s…technique.

And for the intervening few days, it had looked like Shulk was going to be able to avoid coming to another impasse with Reyn. Even the morning after that dreadful spanking, he’d dragged himself out of bed before dawn for combat drills, even though his whole body had been stiff and his bottom had darkened into splotchy bruises that throbbed when he dressed or moved. And Reyn, to his credit, hadn’t treated him any differently, hadn’t made him feel awkward of strange about it, or even commented in the morning when Shulk had clambered, naked, from his bedroll and been obliged to ask, sheepishly, where Reyn had stowed his clothes other than to fetch Shulk his pants and continue making breakfast. It had been a great relief to discover that, other than his backside aching, Reyn didn’t seem to think of Shulk any differently.

But the threat had been created between them. Not the threat in the sense that Reyn had threatened Shulk; he hadn’t even mentioned spankings between then and now. But it hung over Shulk, the knowledge that Reyn had spanked him, that Shulk had let him, the unspoken understanding between them that Reyn now had – or appeared to have, at any rate – that privilege, and that it was not reciprocal. And that created a distance, or a gulf, or something, that separated them, in a way they hadn’t been before. 

So, it was awkward even before considering how bad Reyn had been at spanking him. He was too forceful, too fast, too upsetting in the wrong ways. It had left Shulk feeling disoriented and isolated. Sure, he’d felt hurt during the spanking, but he’d also felt frightened and angry, and that left little room for the real remorse that he supposed was the point, or why bother?

He’d hoped – against all reason, he supposed - that he could avoid the whole issue by simply not winding up back in a situation in which Reyn felt he ought to be spanked again. Four days wasn’t a bad run, he supposed, but there was no way he could take another of Reyn’s spankings. Not just because they hurt as much as they did – though that didn’t help – but because it was so much rougher and so much more alienating than he was used to from Dunban.

“Shulk,” Reyn said again, wearily. “Take your clothes off, all right?”

Under Reyn’s weary yet firm gaze, Shulk shook his head. “Reyn,” he said softly, “we need to talk about this.”

Reyn’s shoulders slumped, and he took a step forward, taking hold of the lower hem of Shulk’s shirt to lift it up and over his head, just like before. Quickly, Shulk crossed his arms in front of his stomach and gripped the hem to keep it in place. “I’m serious,” he told Reyn, trying to sound definite. “I need to talk to you.”

“What you need is to undress for your spanking,” Reyn told him.

“And I will,” Shulk snapped, feeling his face redden in embarrassment, “after you let me talk to you for a second!” Reyn’s grip on his shirt relaxed a bit, and in response Shulk loosened his shoulders a bit too. “Okay? Please? I need you to talk to me first.” For a long second, Reyn just looked at Shulk with exhausted eyes, and Shulk realized that Reyn wasn’t relishing spanking Shulk any more than Shulk was relishing being spanked. “You said I was safe with you,” Shulk told him quietly, and Reyn’s eyes did something quick and pained and sad, and he let go of Shulk’s shirt and stepped back. 

“Okay,” he said. “You’re right. I’m sorry, Shulk. Let’s talk.”

Shulk sighed in relief and felt some of the nervous tension drain out of his body. He’d had to accept that he was definitely getting a spanking, but Reyn hadn’t seemed inclined to change his mind about that anyhow. At least now he was going to have an opportunity to explain to Reyn why he’d hated the last one so much.

Shulk leaned backwards against a tree and then, after a moment’s consideration, sat down on the ground. He rubbed his face. Suddenly, he was feeling his exhaustion again. “Look,” he said, choosing his words carefully. No need to put Reyn on the defensive. “I…” He hesitated. “I appreciate you looking out for me. I do. I mean, you remember, the other night. I agreed to it, right?” Reyn nodded. “And, I mean, I guess…you’re right about what happened today, too. Sharla could have…” Shulk paused, suddenly actually considering the way in which he’d abandoned her, let the team down.

Shulk’s pause turned long, and Reyn must have seen something in his face, because he knelt down in front of Shulk and put a hand on his shoulder. He gave Shulk a reassuring smile. “She’s all right,” he told Shulk, “or close enough to. Nothing to be done about the rest of it, right?” Shulk nodded, dully, but suddenly all he could think of was Sharla clinging to that rock while he’d chased uselessly after the faced Mechon. “Hey.” Suddenly, unexpectedly, that big, calloused hand was cupping Shulk’s chin, turning Shulk’s head to meet Reyn’s eyes. “She’s all right. We’ll handle the rest…all right?”

Closing his eyes, Shulk drew a deep, calming breath, even leaning his hand a little bit into Reyn’s hand. The same hand that had spanked his bottom a few days before felt comforting and warm against his face. At that moment, with the guilt suddenly chewing away at him, Shulk would probably have gone over Reyn’s knee for a repeat of the first spanking. He sighed and opened his eyes. “All right,” he told Reyn. “Thanks.”

Reyn took his hand away and settled back down onto the ground opposite Shulk. It was practically daylight now, a gray and watery dawn that promised a chilly, damp day. “So,” Reyn said, feigning joviality for Shulk’s benefit, he was sure, “what do we need to talk about?”

Shulk squirmed a little at that, and gave a weak, nervous laugh. He felt the blush returning to his cheeks as he considered his words. “Look,” he said finally, after a moment, with all seriousness, “that was a terrible spanking you gave me, and I’m not going to stand for it.”

For a long, long moment, Reyn stared blankly at Shulk, his eyes unreadable, and Shulk worried that he’d said the wrong thing again, wrecked it, that things were going to spin out of control again. Then Reyn’s lip twitched, and he leaned forward, lowered his head, and started to laugh, not just chuckling but guffawing, his broad shoulders shaking. Baffled, Shulk felt himself start to blush harder, and then the exhaustion, the strangeness of the situation, and the infectiousness of Reyn’s laughter washed over him, and he felt his shoulders start to shake, too. So they laughed together for awhile, at each other, at the Mechon, at the Bionis and the Mechonis, at the strange, inexplicable oddness and tragedy of it all, until their sides hurt and they were gasping for air.

After that, somehow, it didn’t seem too bad.

* * *

“All right,” Reyn said, a short time later, rubbing his chin thoughtfully, after Shulk had said his piece. It was his turn now to look sheepish, and a little bit guilty. “I guess that makes sense.” As they’d talked, Reyn had shifted position to sit next to Shulk, at a slight angle, leaning against the trunk of the same tree. He leaned over to bump his shoulder gently against Shulk’s. “Sorry I hurt you.”

Shulk shook his head. “It’s not that bad. I mean, I’m okay, now. I know you meant well.”

Reyn nudged him again. “Sorry I hurt you,” he repeated.

Glancing at Reyn out of the corner of his eye, Shulk smiled sheepishly. “I forgive you.”

“That’s better.” Reyn let his head loll back to rest against the trunk and stared at the canopy of leaves above them. “So, the thing is, I still think we had a good idea the other day.”

“Me too,” Shulk conceded. “Mostly. You just need to, I don’t know, learn.” He could feel himself starting to blush again. “It’s not just hitting me,” he told Reyn, squirming a bit in discomfort. “It’s…” He sighed, rolling his eyes, practically hearing Dunban’s voice in his head. “It’s supposed to be for my own good.”

“Right…”

“I can teach you, I guess. I mean, I guess I’ll have to. Teach you, I mean.”

“You don’t sound too enthusiastic.” Shulk gave Reyn a flat look and got a teasing laugh in reply. Then Reyn’s look sobered. “Might as well get started now, then…right?”

Shulk’s shoulders slumped. He felt better than he had when Reyn had dragged him into the woods, but that didn’t mean he necessarily felt good. Sure, it had been nice to unburden himself, but the situation itself was still so weird and confusing for him that talking about it could only help to a degree. And, of course, he was still shortly going to be a sobbing, well-spanked wreck, that much he was sure of. He nodded, though, just the same. Can’t go this far and then not go further.

“Clothes off, then?”

Shulk’s stomach did a backflip and he glanced at Reyn. “I want to talk about ground rules, first,” he told Reyn. Reyn nodded for him go on. That he was obviously trying to take great care with Shulk’s feelings was helpful, made it feel a bit better. “I don’t want anyone to know, okay?” He sighed. “It’s…I mean, I’m not, you know…” He paused, stammered for a second. “At my age, and, and you’re my friend, and…”

“I get it,” Reyn told him. “Our secret.”

Shulk shot him a grateful smile. “One other thing,” he said. “Dunban, sometimes, if he was really frustrated or if I’d been particularly…lax…he’d spank me with things, like a switch or with his belt.” Shulk closed his eyes suddenly, bracing himself as the image of the vision the Monado had given him flashed briefly before his eyes. “I’m not saying…” He squirmed a little. “I’m not saying you can’t spank me with things if you feel like you need to, but…I’d like to talk about it first. Have a say, maybe.”

“Wasn’t planning to hit you with stuff!” Reyn told him, sounding a little upset at the thought.

Shulk shrugged. “I just want to make sure that’s on the table.”

“Did Dunban used to discuss that sort of thing with you?”

“No.” Shulk shook his head. “But you’re not Dunban, you’re my best friend, and my feelings ought to matter to you.”

Reyn nodded slowly. “That all sounds fair. Our secret, and I won’t hit you with nothing unless we talk about it first.”

A long sigh slipped out of Shulk and he nodded again. “All right.”

“That all?”

“That’s all.”

There was another long silence, and then Reyn said, again, “Clothes off, then?”

Shulk shifted around uncomfortably. “Dunban never used to make me strip completely,” he said quietly, feeling his cheeks grow hotter. This was already so humiliating, so strange, so personal, that it no longer seemed quite as foolish to complain about being told to strip bare.

Grinning suddenly, Reyn got to his feet and proceeded to roll up his sleeves, a gesture that Shulk found singularly discomfiting. “Well…I’m not Dunban. Like you said. Take off your clothes, all right?”

Shulk briefly considered complaining, thought about pointing out that all Reyn really needed to spank him was access to his backside, then thought better of it. He remembered with a wince the time he’d tried to persuade Dunban that he should be allowed to keep his underwear up during his spankings. Not only had Dunban insisted on Shulk baring his backside, he’d pointed out that Shulk was, after all, being punished, and if he objected to having his underwear pulled down, in Dunban’s mind that was a good argument for doing it. 

Shulk glanced at Reyn’s arms again – he suddenly found them very distracting – and decided not to encourage Reyn to spend too much time thinking about the emotional dimensions of spankings and punishment. Besides, it wasn’t as if Reyn hadn’t seem him nude the first time. At least this time I get to take off my clothes myself, Shulk told himself wryly, instead of having Reyn undress me.

“This might actually be kind of fun,” Reyn announced, rolling his shoulders, as Shulk turned his back on him and started to undress. “My first spanking lesson.”

Shulk’s face felt hot. It had felt hot forever. He was never going to not be blushing, after this. At least turning his back to strip was, like last time, helping soothe his jangled nerves. “Might be fun for you,” Shulk conceded as he slipped off his jacket and folded it carefully. There was an element of stalling for time in the care he took, he had to admit. “But I’d like to be able to pretend you’re taking this seriously.”

“I am,” Reyn replied, and though Shulk wasn’t look at him and couldn’t see his face, he could tell by Reyn’s tone of voice that he’d wanted to Shulk to understand his sincerity. “I’ll take good care of you, Shulk.”

A quick, unfamiliar fluttering danced across Shulk’s chest, and he took hold of the back of his shirt’s neck and pulled it off over his head, tousling his hair. This is still so weird. He folded the shirt and laid it down on top of his folded vest, then his hands went to his waist and found the ties securing his pants. Glancing shyly over his shoulder, he saw that Reyn was watching, and his stomach fluttered wildly again for a second. For a second he considered leaving his underwear on, at least while he was instructing Reyn, and then found himself trying to decide if it was more mortifying to remove all his clothes now and spend more time naked, or try to hold onto his underwear for the time being and running the risk of Reyn simply pulling them down at some point. For a second, his distracted, weary mind found itself wondering how his life had arrived at such a point.

He slipped his thumbs simultaneously into the waistband of both his pants and his shorts and, bending over, slid them both down his legs. He was agonizingly conscious of the feel of his underwear coming down, sliding over the curve of his bottom, brushing against the length of his cock. Shulk tried not to think about the way that bending over presented his now bare backside to Reyn’s gaze. 

Lifting first one leg, then the other, Shulk removed the last of his clothes, separated his pants from his underwear, and bought himself a few more seconds by carefully folding each. Though his back was still turned to Reyn, he fancied he could feel Reyn’s eyes on him. It was not a comfortable feeling, made worse by the knowledge that he was shortly going to have no reason not to turn around, walk over to Reyn, and instruct his friend on how best to spank him. Strange to be naked, in the open, in the daylight, the rising sun shafting through the trees and dappling shadows across the ground and his body, the birds singing as though nothing unusual was happening.

He heard a rustling sound behind him, of Reyn sitting down, and then the sound of Reyn’s hand patting his leg. “Come on, Shulk,” he said. “Let’s get started.”

“Right,” Shulk replied weakly, glancing down at his naked body nervously. “I’m coming.” It wasn’t as if Reyn hadn’t seen pretty much everything the other day – even if he’d been shy initially, hiding his nakedness couldn’t have been farther from Shulk’s mind once the spanking was over – but it still felt strange, especially since Reyn was about to punish him, to just turn around and present the entirety of his body to Reyn’s gaze. After a second’s more hesitation – Reyn made an impatient sound – Shulk cupped his hands over his genitals and turned. He was weirdly hyper-aware of the curly, sandy-coloured fringe of hair around his cock tickling the palms of his hands as he met Reyn’s gaze.

Just a for a second, Shulk saw an amused smirk flicker across Reyn’s lips, and saw Reyn consciously school his expression to neutrality. Shulk blushed hotter. “Give me a break, Reyn, all right?” he asked, hoping he didn’t sound too plaintive. “This whole situation is strange.”

“As you like,” Reyn said with a shrug, then crooked a finger at Shulk. “Come here.”

Sheepishly, Shulk shuffled over to where Reyn had seated himself on a convenient stump. If it had been Dunban spanking him, not Reyn, then Shulk would have expected to be bent over it, probably on his knees, to get what was coming with him; Reyn, in contrast, seemed wedded to putting Shulk over his lap. For a second as he walked over to Reyn, Shulk briefly considered suggesting putting himself over the stump instead of over Reyn, then decided against it. Hopefully having more of his body in contact with Reyn’s would help him more efficiently communicate any distress he was feeling, especially once the ‘lesson’ progressed past the point where Shulk was able to contribute coherently.

As he got closer, Reyn reached out and settled his hands on Shulk’s hips again, drawing him closer. “Don’t look so frightened,” Reyn told him with a warm, reassuring smile. “We’re in it together, right? It’ll be all right.”

“I’m not frightened,” Shulk insisted, mortified. Reyn’s hands felt warm and strong on his skin. “I’m just not terribly excited about getting a spanking.”

Reyn offered only a shrug in reply, then guided Shulk along to his side and assisted his friend in lying across his lap. This time, realizing that trips over Reyn’s knee might become a feature of his life going forward, Shulk did his best to ignore his aching dignity and squirmed around a bit on Reyn’s lap, shifting his hips and his weight to try to find as comfortable a position as could be expected. After a moment he paused and looked over his bare shoulder at Reyn. “Could you…spread your legs a little bit, please?” he asked. Reyn looked confused, but Shulk raised his hips off of Reyn’s lap for a second and Reyn obliged. Shifting his hips forward, and reaching shyly under his own body, Shulk adjusted his cock so that, rather than rubbing up against the rough material of Reyn’s trousers as he was spanked, it hung, as much as possible, down in the gap between Reyn’s legs. He heard Reyn snort in amused disbelief as he realized what Shulk was trying to accomplish.

“Comfy?” Reyn asked Shulk, who replied with an irritated, embarrassed glance over his shoulder again. “What I mean is,” Reyn went on, sounding amused, “can we get started?”’ 

Shulk sighed. “Reyn,” he said, “please.”

“Sorry,” Reyn replied, and his big hand come down gently to rest on Shulk’s backside. He felt his spine stiffen at the touch, but managed not to squirm or groan at the touch. “I’m taking this seriously, I am. But you gotta admit that this whole situation is a bit weird.”

“Oh,” Shulk said, letting his head drop. Carrying on a conversation while jackknifed over Reyn’s lap was disorienting. “I hope this isn’t too strange for you, Reyn,” he said, letting a hint of sarcasm slip into his voice.

Reyn squeezed Shulk’s bottom firmly, and Shulk couldn’t help but read a tiny bit of warning into the pressure. It was mortifying – everything was mortifying – but it did serve, at least a little bit, to remind Shulk of the realities of his position. Nude, bent over Reyn’s lap, he was definitely going to be spanked, but at least Reyn had heard him out about technique and wasn’t just hitting him again, like last time. And if their situations had been reversed, Shulk couldn’t have said with absolute certainty that he wouldn’t have found the strangeness of it all at least a little bit amusing – though he told himself he’d have concealed it better than Reyn was.

There was a silence that lasted a few moments before Reyn said, “So what do I do now?”

“Well…” Shulk squirmed a little bit in discomfort. “Well, you start hitting me, I guess.” Reyn’s hand abruptly lifted off of Shulk’s backside and he started in surprise, turning at the hips to look up at Reyn. “Wait! I didn’t mean right away!”

Reyn gave Shulk an unimpressed look, hand still raised up to the level of his head, ready to come down. “Don’t know why this is so complicated,” he told Shulk. “Last time we did this, it looked like I got you where you needed to be.”

Shulk blushed. “It’s not just about making me cry,” he replied. “I guess if that were all it was about then you did a perfectly good job last time.” He briefly lost his train of thought as Reyn lowered his hand and rested it on Shulk’s bottom again, absently cupping both cheeks.

“But?” Reyn prompted.

“But,” Shulk stammered, recovering himself, “you were hitting me so hard and so fast that I couldn’t keep track of what was going on. I lost sight of what I was being punished for, which misses the point. If I’m just hurt, and not, you know, regretful…then you’re not spanking me, you’re just hitting me a lot.”

Reyn seemed to think that over for a moment. “Guess that’s fair. So how do I do it?”

Shulk hesitated for a second, then reached behind himself and took Reyn by the wrist, guiding his hand so that it rested at the very crown of his bare backside, where his cheeks were fleshiest. “Start here. Bit more gently. And go slow, least at first. Once you get started, you can switch between fast and slow to keep me guessing, but to start out with, just…warm me up. All right? And never go above this area. You could really hurt me. Okay?”

No, no, no. Shulk could feel his cock starting to stiffen where it hung down between Reyn’s legs, of its own accord. If his face could have turned redder it might have. It had never been like this with Dunban, so emotionally intense, so intimate; he’d certainly never had to guide Dunban’s hand across the most personal, secret parts of his body, showing him where to touch him, explaining to him how to discipline him. He’d occasionally gotten an erection before one of his spankings from Dunban, but he’d never given it much thought, usually because he was too promptly distracted by his punishment, and his erections tended to fade once Dunban began spanking him in earnest, but this was different, stranger, more alien. He could only hope that Reyn didn’t notice, that they moved briskly from teaching to spanking, and his erection did what it usually did when he was getting a spanking.

“Well?” Shulk started in surprise over Reyn’s lap, realizing that he’d been so distracted by his growing arousal that he hadn’t been listening to what Reyn was saying. Reyn gave his backside a firm pat and Shulk returned to the present. 

“Sorry,” Shulk stammered. “What did you say?”

Reyn sighed. “So slow and lighter, here. Then what?”

Shulk’s shoulders slumped. “Well, you basically want everything from there on down to be nice and red, so you sort of…move around. You can hit one side, then the other, and go down to where my…” He stammered again. “…where my bottom meets my thighs. But that part’s really sensitive, so you want to start out a bit more gently down there. It should get a, ummm, relatively big reaction.”

“Am I ever supposed to not hit you gently?” Reyn asked, grinning down wryly at Shulk.

“You’re really interested in making me cry, Reyn, aren’t you?” Shulk asked peevishly, suddenly annoyed. It wasn’t that he minded being spanked – though he did – but Reyn’s pointed interest in hitting him hard was really beginning to grate on him.

All that Shulk received in reply from Reyn was a diffident shrug. “You deserve a spanking, don’t you? And those are supposed to hurt, aren’t they?”

Shulk couldn’t argue with that. He tried to relax and closed his eyes for a second, took a few deep breaths. “I guess so,” he told Reyn, sadly. Maybe if he seemed pathetic and sorrowful enough, Reyn would go a bit easier on him; in any case, it probably wasn’t a good idea to be snappish with Reyn when he was already nude and jackknifed over his friend’s lap. He sighed and continued on, guiding Reyn’s hand by the wrist down to where his bottom curved into his thighs. He tried to ignore the baffling way that Reyn’s hand on the most sensitive part of his backside made his cock twitch. “Once everything from there to there is pretty red, you can really get started, all right? Like I said, this part here…it really hurts. So you mostly want to go above this area unless I’ve been really, really, really bad. I mean that, Reyn, okay?” Reyn nodded in reply. “So you can go fast, then slow, or whatever you like, but move around. It keeps me…” He sighed again. This was awful. “It keeps me guessing, so I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

“And how do I know when we’re done?”

Shulk hesitated. The urge to give an answer that would get him out of a spanking faster was almost more than he could bear. After a moment’s hesitation, though, he decided on honesty. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t agreed to this, after all, or that he felt as if he didn’t deserve it; even if being spanked wasn’t his favourite way of being disciplined, least of all when Reyn was the one doing the spanking, he knew he was owed one. It was just difficult being so damn noble, that was all. “When you decide,” he told Reyn sadly, surrendering. “If it’s just a small thing, you don’t always need to make me cry or even, umm, pull down my pants or make me undress. But if it’s a big deal, then, I guess, when you feel like I’ve been punished enough.” On the other hand, there’s no need to completely martyr myself. “If you’re going to go for a long time, though, you can give me a break now and then, during, I mean. Just for a minute or two. You don’t have to let me stand up or anything, just give me a second to collect myself.”

“So you can remember why you’re getting a spanking,” Reyn offered, barely suppressing a grin.

“So I can remember why I’m getting a spanking,” Shulk affirmed. “Just try to remember to keep everything in mind, okay? Once we get going, I’ll…I’ll probably be too much of a mess to give you much advice. I’m trusting you, Reyn, all right?”

“You can, Shulk,” Reyn told him solemnly. “I promised, didn’t I?” 

There was another silence. Reyn’s hand drifted back up from Shulk’s thighs to the fleshiest, curviest part of his bare bottom. Shulk’s cock seemed to have gotten itself under control – he was still erect, but not painfully so, and though he could feel his erection rubbing against the fabric of Reyn’s trousers whenever it twitched, he doubted it was exerting enough pressure for Reyn to be aware of it. As long as Reyn spanked him hard enough that the erection subsided, he figured he wouldn’t have to worry about the situation becoming more awkward than it already was. Just as long as Reyn gives me a good, hard spanking. For just a second, he found himself wondering, again, when his life had become so strange, and why he’d agreed to let it.

Reyn patted Shulk’s bottom again. “Guess I can get started, then?”

For a second, Shulk was certain there was something he’d wanted to tell Reyn and forgotten to, through the haze of abject humiliation and baffling arousal. He chewed on his bottom lip and tried to remember what it had been, before deciding that he was just trying to put off the inevitable. The sooner Reyn got started, the sooner it would be over and he’d be allowed to stand up and put his clothes back on. “Guess so,” he told Reyn, with some reluctance, dropping his head and trying to relax his shoulders, spine, and backside.

Between one second and the next, then, Reyn’s hand disappeared off of Shulk’s backside and returned, forcefully, right where Shulk had told him. Startled by the quick onset of the punishment, Shulk yelped in surprise and kicked his legs briefly, but based on a single spank at least Reyn had taken his words to heart, as he wasn’t immediately spanking Shulk with the same unbridled ferocity that he had last time. “Too hard?” he heard Reyn ask, and against all of Shulk’s notions of self-preservation, he gritted his teeth and shook his head.

With that affirmation, Reyn took the reins, and Shulk’s second spanking began in earnest.

People sometimes took for granted that Reyn was a bit of a goof-off; he was loud and exuberant and not always the most careful, cautious, or tactful person. He was the sort of person who might get mad enough, for example, to suggest he ought to give you a spanking as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Some people thought – wrongly – that that was all there was to him. Shulk, on the other hand, had always seen Reyn for what he was: a dedicated, disciplined, conscientious person who sometimes needed to be pointed in the right direction before being let loose. There was actually very little about him that was frivolous or careless. 

If Shulk hadn’t already known that about Reyn, however, his second spanking at Reyn’s hands would have taught him that. For all that he appeared to be dealing with his discomfort with the situation in a way that irked Shulk, Reyn had clearly taken everything Shulk had told him to heart and was doing an admirable job getting everything right the second time around. In a way, at least early on, when his appreciation was comparable to his discomfort, Shulk found that he appreciated that; it meant that Reyn was treating this as a responsibility, something he needed to take seriously and apply himself to.

Reyn’s big, rough hand, while not striking Shulk as ferociously initially as he had before, was still a forceful implement even on its own. Each spank landed on a different part of Shulk’s upturned bottom this time, also. It was unpredictable: here a blow to the left cheek, there a blow to the right, suddenly a short, sharp smack that covered the center of both. And Reyn was working his way up and down Shulk’s bottom, working slowly and carefully down from the fleshy crown of Shulk’s backside towards his thighs. Within moments, Shulk’s appreciation for Reyn’s diligence had been eclipsed by the growing heat spreading across his bottom, and he was doing his best not to squirm or do more than groan in dismay when Reyn hit him. This spanking was more immediately familiar to Shulk, more like when Dunban had thrashed him in the past, but that didn’t make it markedly more pleasant.

Finding himself squirming under Reyn’s methodical assault, Shulk forced his legs down and crossed his ankles to try and keep from kicking, reached down and wrapped his hands around Reyn’s ankle to try to hold himself in position and keep from reaching back to try and put a stop to this. The urge to bite down on his lower lip to keep himself from making any noise was almost more than he could stand, but he knew he ran the risk of hurting himself if he did. In any case, Shulk’s lingering thoughts of decorum fled from his mind the first time Reyn’s hand came down heavily on the sensitive spot where Shulk’s bottom curved down to his thighs. 

“Ah!” he shouted, in spite of himself, bucking on Reyn’s knee, head coming up. “Reyn! No!” Tears sprang into his eyes at the sharp, hot pain.

Almost immediately Shulk felt Reyn’s hand come to rest, gently but firmly, on the back of Shulk’s neck, and pressure was applied, pushing his head back down so that he could resume his position bent across Reyn’s lap. Reyn’s seeming indifference to Shulk’s crying out pushed Shulk over the edge, and hot tears began to spill down his cheeks as he was forcibly lowered into position. “Reyn,” Shulk gasped, trying to sound authoritative. He’d agreed to be part of this, surely he could choose to not be. “Reyn, no, that’s enough, I can’t…”

Reyn’s hand came down sharply again, smacking down onto Shulk’s other thigh in the same sensitive place. Again, Shulk cried out, and he felt his whole body shudder as he started to cry in earnest. Reyn was hitting harder now, too, he could feel it; the even, stinging warmth across his bottom told him that he was already well-prepared for a harder spanking. “Please,” he gasped.

“This is happening, Shulk,” Reyn told him firmly, and hit him again, on the center of his bottom. Shulk’s legs began to kick in protest. “You need this. Sharla could have been hurt, or even died.” Another blow came down and Shulk began to sob. “I’ve got you, and you’re safe…” Another spank, another cry. “…but this is going to happen to you whether you want it or not

The reminder of his failure in the battle with Xord – the risk he’d exposed Sharla to – killed Shulk’s pleas in his throat and he slumped over Reyn’s lap. For a second Reyn’s hand just rested on Shulk’s skin, rubbing his backside in slow, gentle circles, and it felt so comforting to Shulk that in spite of himself he raised his hips a little, pressing his cheeks into Reyn’s hand. In his mind’s eye he could see Sharla, hanging off of the edge, and he could see himself turning away, charging after his enemy, leaving her there. He shuddered suddenly, even though Reyn wasn’t spanking him, and suddenly his eyes welled up with tears again so thickly he could barely even see. He’d never been much for tears, he tried to eschew regret in favour of more productive solutions, but that morning, naked, bent over Reyn’s lap, tears in his eyes, it all suddenly felt so immediate, so powerful, so…deserved. He couldn’t go back in time and do anything differently, handle himself better, but he could do this. He could accept this. Shulk blinked his wet eyes and felt the tears cascade down his cheeks. Glancing over his bare shoulder at Reyn, he nodded and swallowed hard. “Okay,” he whispered, and received a nod in reply.

The hand came down again, and again, and again, all over his backside, unpredictably, and while initially Shulk still had the presence of mind to try and keep track of where Reyn’s blows were falling, within a few minutes he was too lost in pain and regret to keep track of anything at all. He stared down at the dirt under his face, watching the hot, regretful tears drip off the end of his nose, jerking with each powerful blow to his bottom, and sobbing as if his heart was breaking, which, in some sense, it was. It had never been like this with Dunban - too remote, too mechanical, for Shulk to really feel much of anything other than pain and a desire to do better so as to avoid being spanked in the future, but with Reyn, it was strange, new, raw and intimate. He felt the regret he ought to have felt from the very beginning, memorized it, linked it to the pain and the humiliation, let himself feel selfish and sad and chastened, angry at the way he’d disappointed himself. 

Reyn was unpredictable even once he’d moved from warming Shulk up to spanking him in earnest, changing his rhythm and his pattern from moment to moment. It kept Shulk off guard, kept him from anticipating what was coming, kept his mind firmly on what he’d done and what was happening to him because of it. He kicked his slender legs, held onto Reyn’s ankle with all of his strength, until gradually, under the assault, the fight left him and he limp, again, over Reyn’s knee, humbled and regretful, his body twitching and his cries intensifying with each blow, but with no energy left to struggle, cry out, or plead for mercy.

And he cried, and cried, and cried, until his chest ached and he realized that he wasn’t being spanked anymore, and hadn’t been for some time. Shulk took a long moment to try and recover himself before he even thought about lifting himself off of Reyn’s lap. He gently uncurled his fingers from around Reyn’s ankle – his fingers were stiff and aching – and raised them to paw at his soaked face, rubbing at his eyes with the heel of his hands to try and clear his vision. Reyn said nothing, waited patiently, didn’t touch Shulk except where Shulk’s hips were pressed against Reyn’s lap. After several minutes in which the only sound in the little clearing were Shulk’s ragged sobs and hiccoughing, Shulk began to push himself to a standing position and Reyn helped him up.

Shulk’s knees were weak again, and he was too aching and upset to worry about his modesty – at least his erection had vanished while Reyn had been beating him. As soon as he was on his feet, Shulk’s hands went to his backside, each cupping a cheek and rubbing away at the merciless ache. His skin felt hot to the touch, particularly the lower curves of his bottom where Reyn had paid particular attention. A dim, hazy part of his mind wouldn’t stop reminding him that he was naked, that Reyn was watching, that his frantic rubbing probably not only made him look childish but was making his cock flop around in a most undignified manner, but he was past caring, too sore and too disappointed in himself to worry all that much about being nude in front of his friend. Again.

“Okay,” Reyn said suddenly, too loudly, sounding uncomfortable, and he started to turn away as Shulk rubbed his backside and cried quietly. “That’s that, then. I’ll head back to camp and get some rest. You, uh, you should probably do the same, once you’ve calmed down and gotten dressed, okay? Your clothes are over there…” And then he was leaving.

Don’t go. Stay here, hold me, just tell me it’s all right and I’m forgiven. Don’t leave me alone when I’m like this. I need you. The words died in Shulk’s throat even as he remembered the one thing he’d forgotten to tell Reyn: the loneliness of feeling abandoned after he’d been spanked. Naked he might be, and red-bottomed, and chastened and sorry and regretful, but there was some firm an unbending part of Shulk’s dignity that refused to beg his best friend just to hold him for a moment and assure him that he was good, and forgiven, and all right. Even as he wished for Reyn to enfold him in his arms, even briefly, and reassure him, he couldn’t find the words to ask for it. It would sound too much like begging.

I need you.

Reyn indicated Shulk’s clothes with a wave of his hand and, turning, began to leave the clearing. Shulk felt himself starting to cry harder again, in spite of himself. He felt abandoned and alone, lonely, more naked than he had before. Almost worse than the spanking, but in a completely different way, was being left alone.

But he was a fixer, and a maker of things.

“Reyn,” Shulk whimpered, and even as Reyn turned to look at him, Shulk took the three steps that separated them and flung his right arm around Reyn’s neck, burying his face in the spot where Reyn’s neck curved into his shoulder. He muffled his tears in Reyn’s neck. 

Reyn stiffened at Shulk’s touch, but after a moment when he realized that Shulk only wanted to be held, his body relaxed and he hesitantly wrapped one arm around Shulk, embracing him at the waist. It meant that Shulk’s naked body was pressed against Reyn’s clothed one, but having come this far Shulk was more or less past worrying about nudity. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered into Reyn’s warm skin, eyes tightly closed.

“S’all right,” Reyn told him, after a moment’s hesitation. He sounded confused, hesitant, but the words were so nice to hear that Shulk wasn’t bothered by his tone. “Just…just tell Sharla you’re sorry too, all right?”

Shulk nodded as best he could without raising his face from Reyn’s shoulder. Reyn’s neck was getting damp from tears, Shulk’s lips tasted salty, but it helped. It helped to be held, to be told it was all right. Slowly, over the course of several silent moments, Shulk’s crying became less pained, until he was more or less under control, weary and weak, but no longer crying. He could feel Reyn’s discomfort, but Shulk indulged himself, at least until his crying was under control. As Shulk stepped back, Reyn released him, and, bashfully, Shulk covered himself up with his hands again. Reyn grinned; Shulk blushed.

“I’m going to head back and get some sleep, okay?” Reyn asked, and Shulk nodded. “Your clothes are just there…you should get some rest too, all right?” Shulk nodded again, turning to fetch his clothes. He heard Reyn walk to the edge of the clearing.

“Reyn,” he said, glancing over his shoulder as he kneeled to gather up his clothes. Reyn glanced back, tense, as if worried Shulk was going to jump him again. Shulk offered the best smile he had in him at the time, which he expected was rather wan. “Thank you,” he said, with a sheepish sigh. “I hated that, but…thank you for looking out for me.”

Reyn didn’t seem sure what to say to that, so he gave Shulk a weary thumbs-up before silently departing the clearing.

Being naked in the early morning with no one around was strange in a completely different way from being naked in front of Reyn, so Shulk dressed quickly, deciding after a moment’s consideration to just put on his pants and his shirt and shove his underwear into his pocket; easier on his scorched and aching backside, though he still winced whenever the heavy fabric of his pants rubbed against his spanked bottom.

Straightening, Shulk began to walk slowly back towards the camp. He hadn’t expected to earn another spanking from Reyn so soon, but he’d got through it, and it wasn’t, in the end, as if he’d been wronged. He’d earned it. Weary and sore though he was, he even felt kind of pleasantly cleansed, as if he’d not only submitted but confessed. His bottom ached and his face was puffy from crying, but his soul felt a bit lighter. He’d tell Sharla he was sorry, too, though he’d of course omit the part where Reyn had thrashed his bottom, and that would help. Then all he had to do was keep in mind what he’d learned up until now, and with any luck it would be awhile before Reyn felt like Shulk had earned another spanking.

It wasn’t really that difficult. He could do this. He could behave. 

The sunlight dappled through the trees and a flat stone lying near the base of a tree Shulk was passing caught the light and sparkled just so, like the onset of a vision, and Shulk remembered with a sudden chill the vision he’d had after his first spanking. Pausing, suddenly feeling chilled in spite of the morning warmth, he glanced around, tried to persuade himself that maybe this forest was the one from his vision, that the air had the particular damp, loamy scent that he’d smelled in the vision, that the strange sparkling in the air had just been something he’d seen in the vision and not something he’d actually been able to see, while getting beaten with a belt, in the future.

He failed on all counts. Something was coming, eventually, something worse. Something he might even agree to – unless Reyn’s promise not hit him with anything served to change the future. Maybe. But the vision was coming, and if the pain and discomfort he’d experienced during the vision had been any indication, it was going to be bad, and it was going to be serious.

Shulk sighed and started walking again, trying not to limp while also being gentle to his stiff legs and his aching bottom. All he could do was his best, he supposed.

Somehow, he found himself suspecting that it wouldn’t be enough.


End file.
